Here is a link to an article I found on the benefits and draw backs of these two software development philosophies. There were only 228 companies surveyed, but the results are interesting.

My take on this topic is that open source is anything but free once you take into consideration the cost of initial installation and maintenance. However, with all the toolkits, extensions, SDKs, etc. that have to be installed these days to develop with proprietary systems, the gap is closing.

After developing so long on the proprietary side of things I find it hard to make the switch to open source. So, many of the things I take for granted in the proprietary world just aren’t there in open source.